Pro-life Virginia Sen. values rights of fetus over those of ‘host,’ which ‘some refer to as mothers’

Virginia state Senator Steve Martin (R) declared that mothers are merely a “child’s host” on Facebook.

Martin was responding to a Valentine’s Day card sent out by the Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition advocating that “[a]ll women deserve access to their full range of reproductive health options — including preventing unintentional pregnancies, raising healthy children, and choosing safe, legal abortion,” Sen. Martin wrote on his Facebook wall.

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“I don’t expect to be in the room or will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive,” Sen. Martin wrote. “However, once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.”

What pro-choice advocates want, Martin insisted, is “access to ‘safe, legal abortions,’ any time one might be desired. [So] then why did you write all the rest of that bologna about raising healthy children?”

Legislation proposed by Sen. Martin includes 2012’s Senate Bill 543, which attempted to limit the definition of “surgeon” in order to exclude licensed abortion providers. The bill “[d]efines ‘surgery’ and provides that no person other than a licensed doctor of medicine, osteopathy, or dentistry, a licensed nurse practitioner, or a person who is acting pursuant to the orders and under the appropriate supervision of a licensed doctor of medicine, osteopathy, or dentistry shall perform surgery.”

Sen. Martin is also the state chairmen of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative organization whose main purpose is to re-brand industry backed opposition to legislation as the product of grass-roots efforts.

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About the Author

Scott Eric Kaufman is the proprietor of the AV Club's Internet Film School and, in addition to Raw Story, also writes for Lawyers, Guns & Money. He earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Irvine in 2008.